Good for W2JGQ!
But, I'm not as happy about the amount of time and money he probably had to spend to defend himself.. Especially since he went through all the proper channels to get approval.. Hopefully ARRL helped him out with legal help, etc..

At least justice was done this time, the good guy did all the right things and won..

I'm happy for Isaacs that he can keep his tower, but I have to say that if you saw the thing, as I have, he's really pushing the envelope. As a fellow New Yorker, I've had to go stealthy in the face of neighborly opposition. A fine line, between antenna efficiency and public relations here. A victory for the amateur community, but probably at some expense in terms of good relations with the public at large.

An interesting observation. I suspect, even though He holds title to his land, it is not "his own" to have, to hold and to enjoy. It is "his own" to request permission do do legal things with it, pay exorbitant taxes, fees, etc. to keep "enjoying" it and to incur horrendous legal expenses should a neighbor not particularly like what he is doing legally, at is own expense and on his "own" property.

Oh....how happy I am that I do NOT live in NYC, yeah...and I know that some of you are happy too, that I am not there...

Before I moved to Los Angeles in 1972, I was WA2HVK and lived in Brooklyn. This was long before the city knew or cared about ham radio towers and there was no need to get a permit of any sort.

My last place of residence was the 7-story twin building between 86th Street and Bath Avenue -- on Bay 19th Street -- about 2 blocks from the water. My antenna system was mounted yet another story up atop the elevator shaft building and consisted of a 20' piece of multi guyed 2 1/2" heavy wall Dural pipe supporting an AR-22 rotor that in turn supported a pair of 16 element phased HyGain 2 meter yagi's atop a pair of 6-element wide spaced HyGain 6 meter "Long John" yagi's.

What was great is that it was impossible to see the installation from the ground unless you were 6 or 7 blocks away and then it looked like a large TV antenna. The feedline was RG-8U foam but it was on the back side of the building and only had to come down to the 5th floor and into the apartment via the slide out air conditioner mount. So it too was not easily seen.

As I also took care of the Master Antenna TV reception system for both buildings, I installed a lot of Drake TV-72-HP filters on the down leads from the distribution amps to the various apartments and one on the input to each amplifier. Thankfully the original contractor had wired the building with double shielded RG-79 so there were no complaints from anyone in the buildings even those times I fired up the 4-1000 legal limit amp. Most of the time I just ran the Swan 250C barefoot with or without the TV-2B and let the antennas be the amplifier.

When we decided to move West, I stored the two six meter beams and one of the 2 meter beams, and the big amplifier (and some other ham goodies) at the home of my late friend Larry Levy, WA2INM's parents in Flatbush figuring I would go back the following year or two and retrieve it. The other 2 meter yagi was broken down and moved West.

While Ive been back and forth coast to coast many times, that radio retrieval trip back happened and I have no idea as to what happened to the aluminum hanging from the basement roof of the Levy home on East 18 Street nor the "big amp" wrapped in plastic sitting in the corner. But it was a great station and antenna system for the 3 years I had it up. I doubt that today I would be permitted to install such an array let alone afford the required permits. -- de WA6ITF

PS: I forgot to mention that a few yeats before I moved to the building the late WA2KQZ had lived there and the antenna mounting brackets were already in place. The difference is that Paul had a Mosley TA-33 tri-bander with a Ham-M rotor and lived on the top floor.

Regardless of the rights or wrong. You have have the neighborhood mafia telling other people what they can do in their own backyards on property that they own.

You cant tell any other neighbor that he can only have one tree and no swimming pools or tennis courts. I wonder when owner a private piece of property came with the proviso that the neighbors can tell you what you can and cant do.

Its so sad to see western democratic states basically violate peoples property rights based on mob opinions.

The USA has become a country of busy bodies and code enforcement bureaucrats with a sole purpose of making a ham's life miserable. You must investigate the City, county, township and state laws. Then investigate if there is an HOA and if they are toothless, generous, and respectable or if they are busy bodied creations that have no interest in your hobby, safety, ETC only be assure themselves that your lawn is cut to the prescribed height every two days. Then you must look up Title restrictions the builder, designer architect decided would make their creation more pleasing to they're vision of beauty.

Did I miss any group, organization, or agency? Oh yea, how about neighbors that decide to make someones life miserable by running the evil ham off the road and off his property.

When I was a kid we had two neighbors when the new guy had purchased the old guys farm, the OG had cut a nice corner off the full section for a nice little Gods acre. Yet the OG treated the NG as an enemy even though the NG had purchased the OG's farm at respectable cost. The OG did everything to the NG he could to harass, intimidate, and just plain deionize. The NG quickly tired of these tactics and used the very protective agriculture laws to get even. I am sure the farmers out there know just what the NG did already. The NG spread, piled, mounded very large quantity of fertilizer around the OG's pretty picket fence. To the uninitiated, non farmers out there these mounds of fertilizer was manure, deep, fresh and super stinky. The NG was decent about the whole pile of $#!+t thought, he leveled it out nicely after it had lost most of it's aroma to expose the more wet and moist interior goop!
Problems escalated to the courthouse which proved to be a loosing process for the grumpy OG, and he shortly stopped his persecution of the NG whom in his very generous way slowly reduced his piles of $#!+t over the next few years.

Its amazing the history we see over the years without realizing the story within.

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